by Matt Dunn
“Right. Only... I’ve already cooked.”
“What?”
“I said, I’ve already cooked.”
“And I said ‘what?’ as in ‘what have you already cooked?’”
It’s all I can do not to run my cone at top speed into his shins. This is typical of Luke. Most people would be grateful that Julie has spent time in the kitchen preparing them something to eat—I know I am, even when all she’s done is open a packet. But Luke is evidently about to decide whether they eat in or not based on what it is Julie’s lovingly made him. Cat behavior, if ever I saw it.
“Your favorite.”
“Which is?”
I do the dog equivalent of rolling my eyes. If Luke doesn’t even know what his favorite meal is... Then again, he can’t seem to decide who’s his favorite out of Julie and his wife.
“Chili. Con carne.”
“Ah.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’ve, um, never really liked it.”
“Chili? But you order it all the time whenever we get takeout from Nacho Daddy’s.”
“Your chili.”
Julie’s face falls so quickly I worry I might need to leap out of the way. “But...” is all she manages, before her lip starts to quiver.
“Nothing personal, love,” Luke says, though not one part of that sentence sounds sincere. “I just prefer...theirs. That’s all.”
There’s silence in the kitchen for a moment, then Julie simply marches over to the cooker, picks up the pot of chili, and empties it directly into the swing bin in the corner. I’m horrified, but Luke, however, just sighs quietly.
“Here we go.”
“What do you mean, here we go?”
“I get enough of this at home.”
Julie folds her arms defiantly, though to my trained eye, she looks on the verge of tears again. “You get enough of everything at home, by the looks of things.”
Luke stares at her. “I knew you still hadn’t forgiven me!” he says, maintaining the stare for a moment or two longer, then he glances down at me, and like a bad actor, he suddenly and without warning slumps down at the kitchen table, and puts his head in his hands. “Do you think this is easy for me?”
“Yes, quite frankly, I do!”
“Well, it isn’t!” he says, displaying all the debating acuity of a five-year-old. Then, in a classic example of both switching the focus away from him and delivering what you can’t help but see as an ultimatum, Luke shakes his head pityingly. “You’re going to have to get past this, Julie, if you and me are going to have any chance of a future.”
“Get past this?”
“That is what you want, isn’t it? You and me? Forever?”
Julie hesitates, and I find myself hoping, willing her to say “not anymore,” but like a drowning woman who’s just been thrown a life vest, she grabs onto Luke’s last sentence with both hands.
“Of course it is. It’s what I’ve wanted all along.”
“Then stop making this about you all the time. How do you think I feel, trying to do the right thing by everyone, seeing you at work every day, knowing we can’t be together until...?”
“Luke, I...I didn’t think... And I need to...”
Luke holds her gaze for what must be a count of five, then, as if he’s the one forgiving her, he stands up, pushes his chair backward with the backs of his knees, and holds his arms out wide.
“C’mere.”
Julie doesn’t move, and for a moment, I think the balance has swung back in her favor. She looks like she’s weighing her options, and Luke seems to be fearing this is one argument he’s not actually going to win. So then—and it’s quite possibly the most despicable thing he’s done, which if you think about it, means it’s pretty darn awful—he puts on this pathetic face, and says, “I’m not ready to start a family. Not yet. At least, not with Sarah. I’d only want to do something like that with someone...” He leaves the most melodramatic of pauses, then gives Julie a look that leaves her in absolutely no doubt that he’s talking about her. “Someone I was in love with.”
With the air of someone who knows he’s just whacked the ball well and truly out of his court and deep into Julie’s, and is fully expecting it to come back, Luke collects his car keys from the kitchen table. Then he strides across the kitchen, and kisses Julie chastely on the forehead.
“I’ll see myself out,” he says, before wheeling smartly round, and marching back along the hall.
I follow him anyway—because you can never trust what Luke says—and it’s right there and then I make myself a promise. Their reconciliation isn’t going to happen. Not on my watch.
And trust me, I’ll be watching very closely.
12
“Been in the wars, have you, Doug?”
Julie’s dad is here to take me for my morning walk, and the look on his face—a mix of pity and concern—when he sees me in my cone is the exact opposite of Luke’s last night.
“Bit of a tussle with an Alsatian in the park yesterday,” says Julie.
Julie’s dad looks impressed. “Good for you, wee man,” he says. “Though has nobody told you you’ve got to pick your battles?”
I give him a look. I didn’t pick that particular one. Besides, it’s the war with Luke I’m more focused on.
“Aren’t you going to be late for work?” he asks, but Julie shakes her head.
“Doctor’s appointment.”
Julie’s dad looks concerned. “What’s wrong?” he says, placing a palm against her forehead.
Julie laughs. “I’m not really ill. I’m just meeting Priya for a coffee. I’ll go in this afternoon. But that means I can walk Doug, if you don’t mind missing your regular Park Café appointment?”
Julie’s dad looks at me, then at Julie, then he sighs. “No, that’s fine. Probably for the best.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, you know,” says Julie’s dad, but Julie evidently doesn’t, because she folds her arms purposefully.
“Dad?”
With a sigh, Julie’s dad lowers himself onto the sofa, so I attempt to jump up next to him, but I’m disorientated thanks to this stupid cone, and only succeed in getting my front half up onto the cushion. As I slide almost in slow motion back down onto the carpet, Julie’s dad shakes his head.
“I just don’t want to give Dot the wrong impression.”
“And what would that be, exactly?”
“That I’m, you know...” Julie’s dad picks me up and plonks me onto the sofa beside him. “Interested.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No!”
“Because it certainly looked like you were at the barbecue.”
“Okay, yes, then. But it wouldn’t be...”
“What?”
“Appropriate.”
Julie lifts me up and moves me a foot or so along the sofa, so she can sit next to her dad. “She’d want you to be happy, you know?”
“Huh?”
“Mum.” Julie reaches across and grabs his hand. “You still think about her, don’t you? Still miss her.”
Julie’s dad nods. “Every day. Pretty much every hour of every day, in fact. Your mum was my life. Until you were.”
“Even so.”
“Besides.” He pats the top of Julie’s hand. “I am happy.”
“But you could be happy-er...” Julie looks at him pleadingly. “Time, the great healer, and all that.”
Julie’s dad smiles in a flat-lipped way. “If it was that great, your mum might have got better, rather than suffered for all those years.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know, love. But what your mum and I had...” Julie’s dad stops talking, and his gaze drifts off somewhere. “All I’m saying is, lightning doesn’
t strike twice.”
“Does it need to be lightning?”
“Huh?” says Julie’s dad, again.
“I get it that what you and Mum had was special, and that you might not meet anyone like her again. But that’s the point—you might meet someone different. Someone like Dot. And in a way, that’ll be better, because you won’t constantly be comparing your relationship to what you and Mum had.”
Julie’s dad stares at her for a moment. “I can kind of see the logic in that statement, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re right.”
“Do you really think Mum would have wanted you to be on your own for the rest of your life, especially if you’re only doing it as some sort of tribute to her?” Julie glances toward the heavens for effect. “I bet she’s up there right now, looking down on you with that same long-suffering expression she always used to wear whenever you’d come home with yet another power tool you’d bought from the hardware store because it was on sale, even though you didn’t have a clue what it did, and probably wouldn’t ever use it.”
Julie’s dad lets out a chuckle. “I did do that, didn’t I?”
Julie nods. “Or that time you decided to start making your own wine, then you worked out it was quicker and easier—and cheaper—just to pop to the corner store, even though you’d bought all the wine-making equipment.”
Julie’s dad holds both hands up. “Guilty as charged.”
“Or that day you...”
“Okay, okay,” says Julie’s dad, then he looks up and mutters a third okay, then blushes when he realizes Julie’s seen him do it.
“Go on. Ask Dot out.”
“On a date?” says Julie’s dad, horrified.
“No, for a fight. Of course on a date.”
“I can’t.”
“No, you won’t. There’s a difference.”
“What if she says no?”
Julie half rises from the sofa. “Would you like me to take Doug to the park so I can ask her out for you?”
“Don’t you dare!”
Julie smirks as she sits back down, and Julie’s dad’s gaze drifts off again, as if he’s considering everything she’s said. So I take the opportunity to scamper across her lap and force myself in between the two of them.
“Suppose I did,” he says, then he lowers his voice. “What does a date consist of nowadays, exactly?”
“Well...” Julie hesitates. “I’d suggest you take her out for coffee, but seeing as she works in a café, that might not be the best of ideas.”
“No.” He reaches across and strokes me absentmindedly. “How about this ‘Netflix and chill’ I’ve been hearing about?”
Julie’s jaw drops open. “Maybe not as a first date. And do you even have Netflix?”
“I’m not sure,” says Julie’s dad. “Do I?”
“So that’s a no, then.” Julie laughs. “Why not just ask her for a walk along the river one afternoon. Take Doug. He’d be a great ice-breaker. You could stop off at a pub on the way, have a drink...”
As Julie’s dad mulls this over, I do too, pleased by the idea.
“I’ll think about it, love,” he says, eventually.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Because you’ll never know, otherwise.”
“Okay, okay.”
Julie leans over and gives her a dad a kiss, then she says “great,” and it occurs to me that “great” is exactly what it is.
Because if her dad can move on from a mistake as big as losing his wife, then surely Julie can move on from the mistake she’s making with Luke?
* * *
Priya’s already waiting at a window table in the café at the far end of the High Street, sipping what smells like a latte from the largest mug I’ve ever seen. She waves us over, takes one look at me in my cone, and it’s all she can do to envelop the two of us in a hug before Julie bursts into tears.
“Oh, Jules!” she says, when Julie eventually stops crying, though it’s in the same way as you might say “What now?” and provokes another outburst that even me nuzzling her leg can’t stop.
“Luke... We had a fight.”
“Another one?” says Priya, perhaps trying to imply something, and Julie nods.
“Last night,” she says, between sobs. “He’d come around to explain about, you know...”
“The fact that he was still shagging his pregnant wife?”
Julie nods again, in time with her sobbing. “And he told me he’d never liked my chili...”
“The bastard!”
“...so I threw it in the garbage, then he said he wanted to have a baby with me, not his wife...”
“Bit of an extreme reaction.”
“...and Doug got bitten on the ear...”
“By Luke?”
“By Rambo! In the park.”
“Hold on,” says Priya, eyeing me desperately. “Start from the beginning.”
“Which beginning?” wails Julie.
“Sunday. When you saw Luke and his wife in town.”
“It was awful,” Julie says, once she’s eventually caught her breath. “He was just walking along the High Street with her as if...as if...”
“They were husband and wife?”
Julie shoots Priya a look, then grabs a bunch of napkins from the dispenser on the table. “And then in the pub, they were just sitting there like...” She blows her nose so loudly it makes Priya’s cup rattle in its saucer. “Like they were a couple. And there was me, having a drink with Doug...”
“Here.” Priya puts down the muffin she’s been unwrapping and slides the cappuccino she’s already taken the liberty of ordering for Julie across the table.
“Thanks,” Julie says as she picks the cup up, blows across the top, takes a few breaths to calm herself, then takes a sip. “Sorry, P. It was just the shock of seeing them together like that. And then, when she came over to my table...”
“She came over to your table?”
“She’d spotted Doug on the way to the toilet, and you know the effect he has on people, so she had to stop to give him a stroke.”
“I bet you nearly had one too!”
“That’s not funny,” says Julie, though the look on her face suggests otherwise.
Priya nods as if to acknowledge her own joke, then she reaches down into my cone and scratches me behind my good ear. “Well, you do own the cutest dog in the world. Even when he’s wearing a lampshade round his head.”
I snort in acknowledgment, and Julie smiles proudly. “Anyway,” she continues. “When she was in the loo, Luke came over to warn me off...”
“Bloody cheek!”
“Then she came back, and Luke told her we worked together, and she invited me to join them for lunch...”
“The bitch!”
Priya’s obviously meant that sarcastically, because she smiles, and Julie bravely does her best to return it, then bursts into tears again. “That’s just it! She was so nice.”
Priya reaches over to pat the back of Julie’s hand, then she peers around the café and lowers her voice.
“Did it occur to you to, you know, tell her?”
“Tell her...?” Julie’s mouth falls open. “She was pregnant, P. How could I have?”
“All the more reason for her to know what she’s letting herself in for...” Priya’s expression suddenly darkens. “Christ. And he told you the two of them didn’t have sex, right?”
“Right. That they were more like brother and sister nowadays.”
“Eeew—that’s even worse!” Priya makes a face, pauses for effect, then she breaks off a piece of muffin, pops it into her mouth, and picks up her mug. “How far gone would you say she is?”
Julie mimes various degrees of a fat stomach, then shrugs cluelessly. “Five or six months?”
�
�And when did you and Luke start, you know...” She hesitates. “I’m going to go with ‘seeing each other’?”
“Eleven months and two days ago.” Julie averts her eyes. “Roughly.”
“The bastard!”
“Exactly! Unless...”
“How can there possibly be an unless?”
“Maybe like he said, it’s not his baby. Perhaps she had an affair, just like he did, and got pregnant, and that was just the two of them meeting up for lunch to discuss what happens now.”
Priya sighs, and it’s a long-suffering sigh, the kind I’ve heard her make many a time in Julie’s presence. “Yeah. Which was probably why she asked you to join them. Get your advice. Someone she’s never met before.”
“Or, perhaps he just felt sorry for her one night, and he...lapsed, and she tricked him, and got pregnant to try to keep the two of them together, and...”
“Jules...”
“It could happen.”
“Yeah,” admits Priya. “It could. But chances are pretty high that it didn’t.” She reaches down to feed me a piece of muffin. “Face it, Jules. Luke has been lying to you. And if he’s lied to you about this, then just imagine what else he’s been lying to you about.”
Julie rocks back in her chair, then she sighs loudly. “I’ve been taken for one hell of a ride. Haven’t I?”
“Maybe,” says Priya, clinking her mug against Julie’s. “Though there is one way to be sure.”
“How?” says Julie, desperately.
“Ask Sarah.”
“What?”
Priya shrugs. “Seems to me it’s the only way you’re going to find out the truth about him and her.”
Julie looks mortified at the prospect. “I couldn’t.”
“Why ever not? You said she seemed pretty friendly. Even invited you to join them for lunch.” Priya sits back in her chair and folds her arms. “You’ve got nothing to lose—whereas the opposite is true for Luke. Plus it’s bound to get his dander up, knowing you’re besties with his wife. At the very least, it’s going to be interesting. And might even force him into making a decision...”